Marcel Meili and Markus Peter, Swiss Design Practice, Switzerland Architects Studio

Marcel Meili and Markus Peter Architects, Switzerland

Architecture Studio in Zürich, Switzerland – Contemporary Architectural Practice

18 Sep 2013

RIBA 2014 International Fellowship

The architects have been awarded a RIBA International Fellowship

RIBA International Fellows 2014 citation:

Marcel Meili and Markus Peter, architects, Switzerland

Marcel Meili and Markus Peter News

Marcel Meili belongs to an architectural generation – a little younger than Jacques Herzog, Pierre de Meuron and Roger Diener – educated at ETH Zürich in the 1970s, an institution that has acquired almost mythical status not only in Switzerland but throughout the architectural world. At that time the school was still heavily influenced by the thinking of Aldo Rossi, and interested in the edge conditions of our cities: interstitial infrastructure, industrial estates and working-class neighbourhoods. Meili contributed to this discourse not only in early speculative projects but in his writings, revealing a lucid understanding of the condition of Swiss architecture today.

Conversely, Peter was trained a few years later through the alternative route open to Swiss architects: an apprenticeship followed by technical college, which imparted a more practical understanding of construction-related issues. Thus, Peter’s technological expertise combined with Meili’s academic perspective in an architecture characterised equally by conceptual coherence and constructional experimentation.

One of the practice’s better-known projects, the timber engineering school in Bienne (1990-1999), clearly illustrates this general strategy. The building grapples with the requirements of its programme on several levels. As a high-rise, large-span timber structure with tectonically expressed timber facades and only the circulation cores cast in concrete, the project explored over a number of years the limits of timber construction and fire protection treatments.

Zürich view at Quaibrücke, Switzerland:
Zürich, Switzerland - location of Marcel Meili and Markus Peter Architects studio
photograph : Daniel Kraft, CC BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

Their work reveals a consistent approach, rooted both in a profound familiarity with the rational (Swiss) city and knowledge of Western architectural history. This is grounded in typological research but developed in the direction of a more literary, poetic appraisal of the contradictions within urban environments.

The recent built work of Meili, Peter Architekten includes the RiffRaff cinema in Zurich, the Zurich Central Station extension, the Swiss Re Center for Global Dialogue in Rüschlikon, and the Hyatt Hotel in Zurich. Major current projects include the Zurich Football Stadium, the Helvetia Insurance Headquarters, Milan, and the “Mitten in München” complex, a large passage in the old town of Munich.

More information about Marcel Meili and Markus Peter online soon

Location: Gartenhofstrasse 15, 8004 Zürich, Switzerland, central Europe

Marcel Meili, Markus Peter Architekten – Practice Information

Marcel Meili, Markus Peter Architekten office is based in Zürich, Switzerland and München, Germany.

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Ispace Installation, Rossa, Moesa Region, canton of Graubünden
Design: Davide Macullo Architects
Ispace Installation Rossa
photo : Corrado Griggi
Ispace Installation Rossa

Weltpostpark site buildings, Bern
Design: SSA Architekten, Basel, Switzerland
Weltpostpark residential buildings Bern
photograph © Ruedi Walti
Weltpostpark residential buildings Bern

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Website: www.meilipeter.ch